Chapter 23

After not a few days he brought them before the king and made their case known. Then he set them before his face as the king raged terribly. And the king, seeing them, boiled over with anger and seemed like a madman. He ordered them to be beaten without mercy;

and when he saw them grievously cut down by the blows, he scarcely recovered from his great fury and ordered the beaters to stop. And he said to them: "Why do you carry about these bones of the dead? If it is out of longing for those whose bones they are that you bear them, this very hour I will set you among them, so that, having obtained what you long for, you may be grateful to me." But the leader and guide of that godly band, accounting the king's threats as nothing, as though nothing painful had befallen him, said, with a free voice and a most radiant face that betokened the grace dwelling in his soul: "These pure and holy bones we carry about, O king, fulfilling our longing for the wondrous men whose they are, and bringing ourselves to remembrance of their ascetic life and God-loving conduct, and rousing ourselves to the like zeal, and mirroring the rest and delight in which they now abide; and counting them blessed, we spur one another to hasten to follow in their footsteps. Moreover, we secure for ourselves thereby the remembrance of death, which is most profitable and eagerly wings us toward the contests of the ascetic life,

and we draw sanctification from touching them." Again the king said: "If the remembrance of death is profitable, as you say, why do you not take up the remembrance of it from the bones in your own bodies — your own, and soon to perish — rather than from these alien and decayed ones?" And the monk said: "Though I gave five reasons for carrying the relics, you, replying to but one, seem to mock us; but know well that the bones of those who have died before set forth the remembrance of death more vividly than the bones of the living. Yet since you know that this is so, and the bones in your own flesh foreshadow death to you, why do you not yourself, mindful of the end that is soon to come, set your own affairs in order? Instead you have given up your soul to all lawlessness, and violently and pitilessly you destroy the servants of God and the lovers of piety, who have done you no wrong, who neither share in any of your present goods nor strive to take them from you." The king said: "I justly punish you, the dangerous deceivers of the people, because you lead all astray, urging them to abstain from the delights of life, and, instead of sweet life and the most desirable pleasure and enjoyment, you compel them to choose this hard and squalid and filthy way of living,

and you proclaim that the honour due to the gods should be rendered to Jesus. Lest, then, the peoples, following your deceit, leave the land desolate, and, forsaking their fathers' gods, serve a strange one, I have judged it just to subject you to punishments and to death." But the monk said: "If you desire that all should share in the good things of life, why do you not impart to all equally of luxury and wealth? Instead, the many are wretched in poverty, while you snatch away what is theirs and add it to your own. Then you do not care for the salvation of the many, but fatten your own flesh, preparing matter for the worms to devour. For this reason, having denied the God of all things, you have called gods those who are no gods, the inventors of every lawlessness, so that you, behaving lewdly and lawlessly in imitation of them, may earn the title of an imitator of your gods. For such things as your gods did, how shall the men who attend to them not do likewise? You have wandered, then, into a great error, O king. And you are afraid that we may persuade some of the people, who, consenting to our teaching, would withdraw from your hand and attach themselves to the hand that holds all things together; for you wish there to be many servants of your greed, that they may toil while the profits from them accrue to you. Just as a man who rears dogs or birds tamed for the hunt appears to flatter them before the chase,

but, when they have caught something of the prey, violently snatches what is caught from their mouths; so too you, wishing to have many who bring you tribute and revenue from land and sea, say that you care for their salvation, while you procure for them eternal ruin — and above all for yourself — that wealth more worthless than refuse and rottenness alone may weigh you down; and without knowing it you hold darkness in place of light. But come to your senses out of this nether sleep; open your closed eyes, and behold the glory of our God that shines round about all; and come at last to yourself; for Understand, you senseless among the people, and you fools, be wise at last, says the Prophet. Understand that there is no god but our God, and there is no salvation except in him." The king said: "Cease this foolish babbling of yours, and at once point out Barlaam to me, or you shall make trial of instruments of torture such as you have never experienced." But the high-minded and most noble ascetic, the lover of the heavenly philosophy, was in no way turned by the king's threats; rather, standing unshaken, he said: "We have not been commanded to do what you decree, O king, but what is enjoined by our Master and God, who teaches us self-control, so as to master all pleasures and desires,

and to practise courage, so as to endure every toil and every affliction for the sake of righteousness. Whatever terrible things, then, you bring upon us for the sake of piety, you will rather be doing us good. Do, then, what you will; for we will not endure to do anything beyond what is fitting, nor will we give ourselves over to sin. And do not reckon this a small sin, that we should betray our fellow contestant and fellow soldier into your hands. But you shall not have this laughter against us, though you surround us with countless deaths; for we are not so unmanly as to betray our philosophy through fear of your torments, and to do anything unworthy of the divine law. Against this, prepare whatever instrument of attack you know; for to us to live is Christ, and to die for him is the best gain." At this, kindled with anger, the ruler ordered that their God-praising tongues be cut out, their eyes gouged, and their hands and feet cut off together. And when the sentence was given, the shield-bearers and spearmen stood round them and maimed them in a man-hating and merciless manner;

and dragging out their tongues with little hooks from their mouths, they cut them off like beasts, and gouged out their eyes with iron claws, and with joint-wrenching instruments dislocated their hands and feet and cut them off. But those blessed men, modest and noble in spirit, came forward to the torments courageously, as though called to a feast, spurring one another on and going fearlessly to death for Christ. In such manifold torments, then, the holy ascetics commended their steadfast souls to the Lord, being seventeen in number. Confessedly, then, pious reason is sovereign over the passions, as one not of our own faith has said, recounting the contests of an aged priest and seven children with their like-minded mother, who contended valiantly for their fathers' law; and these wondrous fathers, citizens and heirs of the Jerusalem above, fell nothing short of their steadfastness and greatness of soul.